At 4:30 am the eastern horizon is a searing white arc fringed by two complementary gradients. The glare is fantastic, but the building morning chorus is really the appeal at this hour. Seabirds have just begun to cackle in their dinosaur tongue; chickadees and thrushes throb in stereo phase. Each day is an aural spectacle before the ugly, flat sound of ten thousand cars wrings out its delicacy. It is really just the hours between midnight and 5 am that are available to the ear craving some good details. Days in Portland are battered with the percussive and graceless noises of industry, but at night our little city sinks back into rich acoustic intricacies.

Stand on the Eastern Prom on a foggy evening. Listen to how the lighthouses create a perfect fifth with their warm, placid hooting. The hiss of traffic from Tukey's Bridge is a sustained D flat, and it forms a tense but beautiful chord with these horns of Spring Point (G) and Bug Light (D). Keep wandering and find the working waterfront brimming with musique concrète, the AC motors of chum factories and the electric generators of vacant fishing boats loosing their major thirds into Portland's empty night. The ocean is incredibly talented at carrying sound — listen to each ferry boat as it blasts its requisite launch signal, the noise fanning out across the bay and rolls into the distant Atlantic, or getting tangled up in the filthy mouth of the Fore River.

Portland, for its puny size, is rife with artists and musicians who proudly call it home. The blasted cold of its winters, its saturated summer heat, its waddling tourists, and its laughable job market do nothing to deter us. It hums in weird ways and in this manner serves to soothe our bitterness with its faults. Its vacant storefronts and dank apartments beg to be fed with new energy and innovation. It is at once safe, clueless, and incandescent. I live here because this city is song._Andrew Frederick

Exploring deep within Hannah Holmes, the Maine-born, Portland-dwelling science writer, naturalist, and friend to all animals has turned her lens deeply inward in her latest book, The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself .

Review: The Whole World Waiting They thought America was a glittering land of wealth and fame . . . they were wrong. Fifteen immigrant and refugee teenagers tell their stories of coming to New England and share their perspectives in The Whole World Waiting , a compilation of documentary vignettes lushly shot by David Meiklejohn at locations in and around Portland, Maine.

100 things to do in Maine this summer After an exhaustive search of our brains, experiences, and the insights of our friends and relations, we at the Portland Phoenix unveil a checklist of Maine summer pleasures.

Mayors, media, masses Portland's 15 mayoral candidates are missing an opportunity to connect with the people, both directly and through the media, by failing to publicize their support for OccupyMaine.

BEST 2014: EDITORS' PICKS | May 15, 2014 Our ‘Best of’ categories are quite comprehensive (see our supplement in this issue), but there’s a lot of stuff they don’t cover — things that defy categorization, things we didn’t even know needed to be honored until we saw/experienced/enjoyed them.